CHAPTER 18 : PROCESSING DATA

Name:
NITHIYA MOORUTHY JM40746
ZURIEDA BINTI AHMAD JM40786
Part One : Data Processing in
Quantitative Studies
Editing
Coding
(A) Editing

Regardless of the method of data collection, the information is raw data.
The first step in processing data is to ensure the data is clean.( EDITING)
Editing data for identify :
i. Errors,
ii. Incompleteness
iii. Misclassification
iv. Gaps in the information obtained from the repondent.

Problems can be reduced by:
i. Checking the contents for completeness
ii. Checking the responses for internal consistency.


There are several ways of minimizing such problems:
1. By inference
2. By Recall
3. By going back to the respondent


Two ways of editing the data:
Examine all the answers to one question or variable at a time
Examine all the responses given to all the questions by one respondent at a time.



(B) Coding

The method of coding is largely dictated by two considerations:
1) Variables can be measured
2) Delivering results about variable to your reader

For coding, first level is the difference whether a set of data is qualitative or
quantitative in nature.

For qualitative data a further distinction is whether the information is descriptive
in nature (e.g. a case history) or is generated through discrete qualitative
categories

Descriptive categories, income, gander, religion, attitude towards an issue.

You will realize that almost all responses can be classified into one of the
following three categories:
1.Quantitative responses;
2.Categorical responses (which may be quantitative or qualitative);
3.Descriptive responses (which are invariably qualitative keep in
mind that this is qualitative data collected as part of quantitative research and
not the qualitative research).
For encoding quantitative and qualitative data in a quantitative study you have to go
through the following steps:








Developing a code book
Pre-testing the code book
Coding the data
Verifying the coded data

Step 1: Developing a code book

Question from a survey to code book,

A code book provides a set of rules for assigning numerical values to
answers obtained from respondents.

The questions selected should be sufficient to serve as a prototype for
developing a code book, as they cover the various issues involved in the
process.

Example of questions from a survey
1) your current age in completed years
2)your marital status


Example code book:
Col 1 Col 2

Col 3

Col 4

Col 5

Column 1 : Particular piece of information
Column 2 : The question number in the research instrument
Column 3 : Name of variable
Column 4 : Lists the responses to the various question
Column 5 : Lists the actual codes of the codes book that you decide to assign to a
response



Step 2: Pre-testing the code book

Once the code book is designed, it is important to pre-test it for any problems before
you code your data.

A pre-test involves selecting a few questionnaires/interview schedules and actually
coding the responses to ascertain any problems in coding.

It is possible that you may not have provided for some responses and therefore will be
unable to code them.

Change your code book, if you need to, in light of the pre-test.





Step 3: Coding the data

There are three ways for coding the data:

i. Coding on the questionnaires/interview schedule itself, if space for coding was
provided at the time of constructing the research instrument;
ii. Coding on separate code sheets that are available for purchase;
iii. Coding directly into the computer using a program such as SPSSx, SAS.



Step 4: Verifiying the coded data

Developing a frame of analysis
Analyzing quantitative data manually

i. Developing a frame of analysis, Frame of analysis should specify:
Which variables you are planning to analyze;
How they should be analyze;
What cross tabulations you need to work out
Which variables you need to combine to construct your major concepts or to
develop indices (in formulating a research problem concepts are changed to
variables at this stage change them back to concepts);
Which variables are to be subjected to which statistical procedures.









Analyzing quantitative data manually

Manual analysis is useful only for calculating frequencies and for simple
cross-tabulations.

If you have not entered the data into a computer but want to carry out
statistical tests, they will have to be calculated manually, which may become
extremely difficult and time consuming.



Part Two:
Data Processing in qualitative Studies
3 Ways of Writing the Finding

Developing a narrative to describe the situation, episode,
event or instance
No analysis per se
Think through the sequence to narrate

Identifying main themes ( field notes, in depth interview
transcription write and quote in verbatim format )
Recall the context and correct the contents
Transcribe the interview or observational notes and share with
respondents or research participant to get confirmation and
approval
Need to go through content analysis

Quantify the main themes ( provide prevalence and
significance)
Need to go through content analysis

Content Analysis
Analysing the contents of the interviews or observational fields

to identify the main themes that emerge from the response given by the
respondents or the observation notes

There are 4 steps involve in this process:
a) Identify the main themes
Carefully go through the descriptive responses by respondents to each question
to understand meaning they communicate
Develop broad themes that reflect these meaning
Select the wording of the themes accurately in order to represent the meaning
These themes become the basis for analysing the text of unstructured interview
Go through the field notes to identify main themes.

b) Assign codes to the main themes

Assign a code to main theme is dependent whether want or not to
count the numbers of times a themes occurred in an interview

If decide to count these themes, at random select a few questions
to an open-ended question or from observational or discussion
notes and identify main themes

Continue to identify the these themes from the same question till
reach saturation point.

Write these themes and assign a code to each of them using
numbers of keywords otherwise just identify the main themes.
c) Classify responses under the main themes

Once the themes is identified, the next step is to go through the
transcripts of all interview or notes and classify the responses or
contents of the notes under the different themes.

Use computer program such as Ethnograph, NUD* IST N6, Nvivo
and Xsight for undertaking thematic analysis

Learning one of these programs benefits us if the data is suitable
for such analysis



d) Integrate themes and responses into the text
of your report
Identified responses that fall within different themes,
the next step is to integrate them into the text of the
report
How to integrate them is mainly our choice.
For example:
Some people use verbatim responses to keep the feel of
the responses while discussing the main themes that emerged
from their study
Some people counts how frequently a theme has occurred
and provides a sample of the responses
Depends upon the way we want to communicate the
findings to the readers
The role of Statistics in Research

Helps to answering research questions
How do I organise this data to understand it?
What does that data mean?

Understanding the relationship between two variables ( more
than two variables)

Ascertain the strength of a relationship

Understanding the interdependence between variables and
their contribution to a phenomenon or event ( more than two
variables)

Summary
Raw data or Simply data- Information gather from data
collection either qualitative or quantitative method)

The data processing includes all operation undertaken from
when a set of data is collected until it is ready to be analysed
either manually or by a computer